Recent Gun Cases in Peel Region

A recent Toronto Star story points out a number of gun cases
that have been thrown out in Peel Region where judges have found the police
officers attempted to mislead the Court. Police perjury is not a new
problem. Judicial condemnation at this magnitude, however, is a
relatively new phenomena. Why? One idea: in the last 15-20 years,
the fallibility of the system has been exposed through DNA testing. Those
of us in the system have to work in a system shamed by the fact that hundreds
of innocent people were convicted of murder,
only to be cleared by DNA in the last decade or so. Those numbers say
nothing of the wrongly convicted in cases with lesser crimes or cases where DNA
just never played a role. As well, the advent of cell phone cameras and
advanced video surveillance technology have produced many cases of police
behaving badly- cases where the officers fabricated evidence, lied, and
were caught red handed doing so by the camera. There is no need for
Charter violations to investigate crime. The law has always been
understanding of good faith efforts by police and do provide quite a wide
latitude for police investigative techniques (see the wiretap provisions and
the recent case law relating to wiretapping!!) Knowing that the system is
not perfect, it appears jurists are taking a new approach to dealing with
police evidence. The result will undoubtably be a much higher ration of
Truth in Justice. It's a welcome development.